When my son was very small, he loved little more than books. He’d routinely bring me five at once so we could read them back to back.

Then the colour-coded levels of primary school determined his reading material more than what interested him, and books lost some of their sparkle.

Fast-forward to year 6… He was never motivated by dangling carrots, but once he could choose his own books again, he set out to achieve his ‘gold award’ for regular reading at home.
And he almost did.

But then SATS came. His teachers worked hard to not over-stress the children.
But there were still practice papers, booster classes, multiple homework tasks and months of relentless SATs talk.

Once they were over, my kid stopped reading. He quit working towards his ‘gold award’.

And he is one of the more fortunate children; a neurotypical child who does well, who achieved ‘greater depth’…
Who’s not only a competent reader, but is full of imagination, loves to create stories, goes to drama class and is also well-nurtured at home.

Yet in the almost six months that have passed since, I think he’s voluntarily picked up a book twice.
Testing killed off his love for them.

So what about the children who are not so blessed, not so lucky, not so supported, whose brains are well out of kilter with the learning environment?

Parents can be fined for not sending their children into this education system,  but many schools can – and do – choose to exclude increasing numbers of them, simply because they don’t fit the increasingly narrow window of who is deemed ‘acceptable’ in mainstream.

Secondaries in particular are designed for children who can comply with wildly unrealistic adult expectations – time management, organisation, planning, communication – competencies that many adults never master.

Yet there’s no accountability – or space in the curriculum – for teaching children these skills, who, even at 11 years old, may then be routinely punished for not having yet learned them.
Practices that are deemed in the adult world as coercive control, harassment or abuse are common practice; excused because ‘they are just children’.

Far too many children are already not in school or not coping with school because it’s on them to meet the cookie-cutter needs of the system, rather that the system to be designed around the diversity of their needs.

Do we really need to ask so many children can’t manage, why Alternative Provisions are overflowing?
Because children haven’t changed in the last 10 years anywhere near as much as schools have.
The children in Alternative Provision, waiting for them and in need of are telling us EVERYTHING that is failing them about the current system, but not being listened to.

The system has already created a rod for its own back.

And yet here we are… Another day, another short-sighted educational decision – with absolutely NO evidence behind it – to test children EVEN more; to make even more of them anxious, stressed and unable to cope with the demands of mainstream and diverted to expensive and over-subscribed APs.

What will MORE testing actually do to our kids, especially for those children who struggle with learning already?

They’ll learn that learning is stressful and pointless.

They’ll learn to see themselves as stupid or inadequate.

They will learn to hate school.

And what will happen to the teachers who joined the profession to harness children’s innate love of learning… Whose schools are being turned into data factories where children come to be processed, not to meaningfully engage in learning?

This is NOT just about engagement, motivation, or children needing more ‘grit’.

They are born with 100 billion brain cells in their heads, capable of making millions of connections every second

But the biochemistry of stress is toxic; nothing will destroy neural connectivity faster.

There is nothing more harmful for brain development than chronic stress.

There is no greater myth than that you can stress a brain into learning.

If a policy was designed to disenchant teachers, deepen the divide between families and schools, and destroy children’s appetite for learning, I think this is it.

As professionals and as parents, we need to recognise that children are not the problem.
This reckless sabotage – of their love of learning and their mental health – is.

When will the people who make decisions about how young brains learn, learn about how young brains learn?

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